Creating Christmas ... owls?!

The owl bug has definitely bitten me of late and for some strange reason, I have been compelled by unknown forces to create a Christmas owl ...

'Gloria'

Introducing 'Gloria', my first festive owl shelf sitter - she's perched herself in my workroom for the time being and if she's still sat there on Christmas Eve, I may let her fly into our living room to sit with Miss Tingle Twankey by the Christmas tree.  

'Miss Tingle Twankey'

In the meantime, normal bear service is about to resume, I promise!

Damp squib?

Creativity is a strange thing, sometimes it's at the tip of your fingers and other times it drifts away, taking a sabbatical without warning.  All kinds of unexpected hiccups trip up creative flow but thankfully, it usually demands to be noticed once again when the distractions settle.

In progress on my work table this week

My creative flow took a significant hit two years ago when Dad passed away and since then has graced me with an occasional half-hearted re-appearance, but generally speaking, has needed constant nudging, cajoling and even pleading with, to encourage it to shake itself from lethargy.

'Twink' - my latest owl shelf sitter, completed this week

Luckily for me, our wedding plans sparked my creative instincts again earlier this year thanks to the support of my closest family, who reminded me that creativity should be above all else, fun.  We worked hard for many months to create a wonderful wedding day, the very best kind of fun, but boy was it was tiring - I found myself waking up in the morning, more tired than I went to bed the night before!

  

Once our wedding day passed, a penny started to drop ... I have been feeling exhausted pretty much since Dad died, an overwhelming lethargy had my creativity firmly in its grip and the vitiligo (de-pigmentation of skin) I'd been ignoring for years, had also noticeably spread.  It seems I'd been so busy worrying about and organising life events, I simply hadn't noticed my health.  Fortunately my daughter was far more in tune, insisting I talk to the doc, so eventually I did as she asked and surprise, surprise, discovered I have an under active thyroid gland - which probably explains why I haven't been firing on all cylinders for quite a while!

So the moral of my story is, if your creative spark has become more of a damp squib, please don't ignore the clues like I did.  Happily, now my treatment has begun, I am already feeling less tired, much brighter and thankfully, eager to create again!

Twit Twooooo!

The owls they are a-multiplying!  

'Twit'

After Twiggy, my very first owl softie (featured in an earlier blog post) caught the eye of one of my nieces, her mum (my sister Tina) tipped me the wink, so I decided to develop the design to create a special Autumn owl to celebrate Justine's 21st birthday last week ...  I was delighted to receive a very enthusiastic thank you message as soon as she received him and to read that her little birthday owl has now been named 'Twit'!

'Twiggy' and 'Twit'

This owl bug is biting and 'Twit Three', a rather fetching pink owl, is now underway on my work table ... it seems these silly owls are determined to keep on coming!

Start Simple ...

There's no doubt it takes many years of trial and error to become truly proficient at making an heirloom quality teddy bear.  There are many techniques to master, but I believe that with patience and determination, anyone can learn how to make a teddy bear.  When I made my very first teddy bear, I had no idea how the pieces of a bear fitted together and didn't understand how a jointed teddy bear's limbs worked, so I bought a child's kit from the local toy shop and spent hours hand stitching a very simple bear with plastic safety joints.

Orange Blob Bear - a child's toy teddy bear making kit

'Orange Blob Bear' was the very first bear I ever made twenty five years or so ago and  I remember being very pleased with myself because he looked just like the bear on the kit cover.  Back then, that was satisfaction enough.

Ivor - a mohair kit bear

But after 'Orange Blog Bear', the bear-making bug bit me and I wanted to make what I thought of as 'a proper bear'.  My next project was a mohair kit bear purchased from a teddy bear show.  I called this bear 'Ivor' and strategically placed a tartan bow to disguise the fact he had one arm placed quite a bit higher than the other!

Pomeroy - one of my earliest designs

I loved the fact Ivor was mohair with jointed limbs and glass eyes - at the time he seemed a huge improvement on my previous synthetic orange teddy bear kit and he inspired me to start trying to design my own patterns ... slowly but surely, large traditional teddy bears with big feet and floppy ears began to come to emerge from the old Singer sewing machine my mother-in-law had given me.

'The Biscuit Bears' - one of my favourite 2010 collections

Since those very early bear-making steps, I have designed well over a thousand teddy bears and with each year that has passed, my bear-making skills have developed ...

'Bellamy' - a 22" bear I designed for a collector

So whenever I'm asked today how I make the bears look the way they do, I can only answer, 'it comes with years and years of practise'!  I just started simply and kept taking small creative steps forward ...

'Twiggy'

This weekend I designed a simple soft toy owl from cotton fabrics and felt. Now 'Twiggy' has been completed, ideas for developing my simple softie are starting to emerge ... 

So my advice to anyone hoping to create a masterpiece, is 'start simple and allow your creativity to emerge a step at a time'.  After all, what's the hurry?!